An Experience: What matters…
A designed experience is an event/ series of events that create conditions for a person/ people to receive/engage with a product/service.
The next point I should make in this blog post is then to share a point of view on the intricate differences amongst all the various types of designed experiences; product, service, brand experience. (I am rolling my eyes as I type these words) To me, the specificity of the various types of experiences is to some extent arbitrary. One can argue buying a latte on the Starbucks app has elements of a product experience, service, experience, and brand experience.
The more important conversation about an experience is what are evergreen characteristics that should be considered in designing an experience? And, these have been thoroughly discussed. There are thousands of blogs, articles, and books that speak to the key characteristics of an experience.
But, there is one that is the most important.
As I write this blog post, I am listening to Kanye West’s Donda album which was released a few hours ago. As a Kanye adjacent fan(Adjacent fan is my definition of a friend of a superfan) I am irritated by the fanfare and quite frankly, unnecessary stall of this album’s release. I had noticed the delay in the release only a few months ago, some people say they have been waiting for 2 years! (the tragedy of it all) The superfans I know are well acquainted with this “experience” and in fact, it seems to have elevated and made the consumption of the album more worthwhile.
Ultimately, I, as a flaky listener of his music will stream this album once or twice but the true fans will continue to savor every last word. They seem to appreciate the music more but most notably are well versed with this experience. To them, the stall, the wait, the false alerts with release dates are part of the entire experience. I would assume Taylor Swift fans would not survive in a similar whirlwind and may be grossly disappointed if she put them through such anticipation.
The point here is that consistency is the most important characteristic of any experience. This is why part of defining an experience includes the “creation of conditions”. Ultimately what a person will feel from an experience varies but what guarantees committed users are a set of conditions tuned the right way that fosters an acceptable experience.
As designers of all types, I think this attempt to create consistency is what we should strive for no matter the type of design we practice.
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Hello there! I am Pukka, a dual-degree graduate student at the Institute of Design. (MDES + MBA). I would love to hear your thoughts about what you think is important about an experience, or to roll eyes together on the wait for this Donda album...
Let me know your thoughts!
